Snorkeling and lots of standing on waterfalls

This is very belated because I've somehow become very busy here with SO responsibilities, grocery shopping, cleaning, volunteering, and hanging out with friends!  This post encompasses the last of the Family Weekend fun we had with Bryant's parents.

First up: snorkeling.  Believe it or not, I have all of 2 pictures of our snorkeling trip due to the fact that my camera does not take underwater pictures.  It was beautiful, though!  We went to an underwater sculpture park that is pretty famous around here and had some incredible sculptures, like a bicyclist, a sculpture of the Savior, and a whole field of some dead women....ok, the last was creepy instead of awesome, but it was still very fun!  I saw more variety in fish, plants, coral, etc. than I have ever seen in my life.

I only got pictures of the coastline and Bryant and his mom on the boat, but it was a great morning!

 

The day after the snorkeling trip, Al, Alison, 2 of my friends (Mallory and Krysta), and I went up to Grand Etang Rainforest to see some waterfalls.  We stopped at Annandale Falls first--you may recognize it from the island tour Bryant and I did back in August.

 





Afterward, we went to the Seven Sisters Waterfalls.  This was the highlight of the day due to our awesome tour guide.  His name was Clifton, but he said, and I quote, "Everybody calls me Super Butterfly." (Imagine that in a Caribbean accent and you'll find more humor, I promise!)  He showed us nutmeg, which is the pride of Grenada.

It actually grows that way!  When it's ripe, it splits open like that.  I never knew how cool nutmeg looked on the tree.

See that red part?  It's mace!  And yes, that is the stuff they put in pepper spray.  It is slightly rubbery and grows like that around the dark seed (which is the actual nutmeg) and Super Butterfly informed us that if we had no pepper spray we could just crush the mace up and use that instead.

Here's Super Butterfly, with my friend Krysta in the background.  He had jelly shoes on.  You know, the old school jellies?  His were dyed red, green, and yellow for Grenada and looked distinctly girly.  Super Butterfly also told us great things like, "When you slip and fall in the mud, you need to just embrace and love the moment!" and "This here is your free pedicure" as we hiked down a trail that was nothing but mud.  He also pointed out the local wildlife, like the millipedes (another picture for my favorite little sister here!):

And yes, that millipede was over 6 inches long.  I didn't get close enough to really measure him, but he was a big fella.  Super Butterfly also found a giant termite nest (think about 3 feet tall) and started whacking it with his machete to see if there were termites in it.  Luckily for us, there were not.  I had a very dignified moment when a completely red cricket jumped from the bush behind me, grazed my leg and landed right by my foot.  It was big and there was some squealing.  Then, not a second later, a gigantic lizard ran over my foot, grabbed the cricket in its mouth, and darted off.  Cue more squealing.  Of course, no one else saw the red cricket so they thought I was freaking out about a lizard.  The cricket was real.  I promise.

Then we made it to the bottom two falls.  Beautiful.

Here I am with Krysta, Super Butterfly, and Mallory.  It's hard to get a handle on the size of that waterfall, but it was about 30 feet.  The one below it in the bottom left there was about 6 feet tall.  Krysta and I decided to go jump the falls with a group of other hikers and Super Butterfly.  We couldn't take our cameras so there are no pictures, but it was awesome!  The falls above this gigantic one were between 6 and about 15 feet high and I had a blast jumping them.  Unfortunately, there were also swarms and swarms of mosquitos up there.  So many that I would kill 3 or 4 with one slap on my leg or arm.  I ended up with so many mosquito bites that, at a later date, I counted them.  Between my two legs (knees down only, apparently my thighs don't taste good) I had 78 bites.  I was embarrassed whenever I went out in public because it looked like I was suffering from the plague.

Anyway, we finally got to THE waterfall, the huge one (you can see the size better in this photo) and guess what?  I couldn't jump.  I tried for about half an hour (while other people jumped and I occasionally stepped up and tried to make myself do it) but could not convince myself that it was a good idea.  So here's a video of Krysta making the jump:

 

And here's a much longer video of me standing on top of a waterfall (I have no pictures of it):

You don't have to watch the whole video, because it's a minute and 50 seconds of me standing on a waterfall looking scared.  If you watch the first 5 seconds, you've seen the whole thing.  The best part is I have 6 videos (between 1:50 long and 4:02 long) of me standing on the waterfall.  A lifelong reminder of how wimpy I am, but seriously, I don't regret not jumping.  I'm still convinced I would have died.